Monday, April 23, 2012
April 9-21
I had a pretty eventful last week before spring break. So here are some highlights:
April 9 was my friend Glenn's birthday. His 21st. We celebrated, but it was Monday night, so my night at least was restricted to Nexus for a few hours and then home. But Yunus' 21st birthday was on Friday, April 13, and Glenn and he decided to celebrate both on that fateful day.
Obviously a 21st birthday doesn't mean much to an American who has been "legal" to drink since they left the country a few months ago, but with enough Americans around it can feel pretty special. It's all about the mentality. Plus, as Yunus said, turning 21 abroad isn't the end of the world; you can party hard on your birthday, and celebrate again when you return to the US.
Anyways, the night started with a bunch of us going to our usual outdoor drinking spot, the lookout on Boğaziçi's South Campus, which offers a 230° view of the Bosporus and Istanbul, both the Asian and European sides. In addition to several of us on the Duke program, I.e. Emily, Isabelle, Sarah, etc, we were with many who were not. Besides Yunus and Glenn, we had Alex, Becca, Julie and Paige. All of these people played a small role later in the night.
But the frat star of the evening, the champ of all champs, was Rob, Glenn's dad. Rob had flown in a little while earlier to visit his son and was down to party. I met him on the lookout. It was a little odd at first; I didn't know his connection to this group and, since he is old enough to be Glenn's father (fancy that!), an unexplained appearance might have been awkward. But my reservations were put to rest quickly with introductions and some brief chatting. More on Rob in a bit.
When it came time to head downtown, it was about 10:30. We took the 559C to Taksim and wandered our way down Istiklal Cd to a place called Ritim Roof, on Balik Pasaj off of Istiklal (near Nevizade). It was a calm enough night, nothing too crazy going on as of yet. Ritim Roof has two adjacent parts of a building, each one only accessible from the street. We went up to the roof of the first one, which had a set of tables where we sat and ordered drinks. I didnt order anything, as I had brought a small water bottle of Smirnoff to help me save money in the night.
After the water bottle, and many others' drinks, was empty, we ventured to the other side of Ritim Roof, who's top floor contained the dance floor.
At this point, Rob seemed to feel a tad out of place, on a dance floor with a bunch of 21-year-olds. So he bought a few of us some shots. Being from Texas, his go-to was Tequila, or Tekila in Turkish. Yunus, Glenn, Rob and I toasted and tossed back our shots.
No pain. No recoil. No visceral facial reactions. This was watered down tekila. Uncool. We got another round, on Rob, then headed out.
We crossed to the other side of Nevizade to Balo Sokak via Istiklal, and turned right to find some bars just around the corner from the Mystic Simurgh, where Sophie stayed during her visit here last month. Emily insisted we go here, for the Honono.
On Emily's say so, I dropped 10TL on a drink called Honono, or something like that. It arrived in a glass with a thick, thick base. Totally clear, and apparently flat. Emily demonstrated what to do - put a napkin over the mouth of the glass, wind up and slam the glass as hard as possible onto the table. Then drink.
It was incredible. The mere act of smashing the glass on the table transforms the liquid in the glass into pure bubbles, and the drink flows down your throat in a matter of seconds. The night had begun.
That was the only money I spent that night. Everything else was on Rob. Not what I asked for, mind you. I actually offered to buy Rob some drinks in return for his generosity of endless tekila shots. The interaction went something like this, although most likely with less coherency:
Me: "Rob, you've been so generous tonight, please let me buy you a drink. I know it won't even things out but I want to show my appreciation."
Rob: "You know, that's a great idea. But what about this? How about I buy you a shot instead?"
Me: "Um... That's the exact opposite of how this interaction was intended to go down."
Rob: "Don't worry about it. You're a student, I work. I have more money than you do."
He went away to buy us Tekila shots. Well, us and Yunus, as Yunus was getting one from every round due to the birthday thing.
The shot didn't go down well, it was somewhere in the double digits for how much I'd had that night. I thought I might vomit, so I wandered outside to get some water, breathing heavily to keep myself together. The water did wonders, and I went back to the bar.
Immediately--
Rob: "Marshall! How about another shot?"
Me: "In a minute, maybe."
Rob: "What are you, a pussy?"
Me: "Well screw you, I'll take that shot!"
Here things started to get blurry, and the night dragged on into the wee hours of the morning. I know I went in a cab back with Paige, Alex, Becca, and possibly Isabelle but I can never be sure of these things, I was pretty gone.
Apparently the decision was made at some point to not go back to the superdorm, because Becca, Paige and I ended up at Alex's apartment. We crashed on various couches and I ended up on the floor, wrapped in a curtain for a blanket. I fell asleep there around 6 or 6:30am. The sun was coming up.
About noon we all awoke. I was still drunk. I continued to be drunk until my hangover set in around 4pm. Yunus had a similar experience, and we had some great drunken conversations around 2 o'clock. It was a successful evening by all accounts. And Rob is a legend, the man who outdrank his son at his son's 21st birthday party.
***
No one went out Saturday night. And I mean no one. The aftermath of the night before left everyone in a sluggish state. Around 10pm, though, Emily texted me with an invitation to Easter Midnight Mass.
Most of the world had celebrated Easter the week before, but Emily is Albanian Orthodox (basically Greek Orthodox), and they celebrate Easter a week after the Catholics. So Midnight Mass had arrived, and we were in Istanbul, the location of the Patriarchy, which is the de facto head of the Orthodox church, and in turn the Patriarch, an arch bishop considered "first among equals," but with the prestige that is the closest thing the Orthodox church has to a Pope.
The building is in Fetih (I think), on the original peninsula of Istanbul. The Patriarchy used to be at Hağia Sofia, but when Fetih conquered the city in 1453 the Patriarchy was ousted in favor of turning the church into a mosque, and they had to move. Sometime in the 1600s they moved to their current location, in a Greek-esque building tucked away from the main street.
Emily got us candles to light and hold during the service, and when the Patriarch walked past us outside, we managed to get past the crowds outside into the inside of the church, along the side. He was dressed, like all the arch bishops, in black, mourning Jesus' death. The first part of the service was likewise dark, with dimly lit lamps keeping the service barely visible. Then midnight approached, and the arch bishops and the Patriarch, and the people, made their way outside, while we all lighted our candles.
The bell rang incessantly at midnight. Suddenly (and I missed the switch), the religious leaders were dressed in bright colors, white, red, etc. The Patriarch had replaced his mournful attire with a bright gold and white robe and a beautiful crown adorned with priceless jewels. I was beautiful.
Emily and I were standing just inside the building watching this, and the Patriarch passed within inched of me on his way inside, brushing his robe against my feet. We followed the processional into the middle section of the church, sat in the back, and watched the rest of the service.
It was 4 hours long, and entirely in Greek and Turkish. But it was beautiful. And how many times would I have this opportunity again? So glad I went.
Emily received communion around 3am, and we got out as fast as possible. We took a cab back, stopping at Hazal Ana for some Iskender (which they didn't have, so we had something similar) to break Emily's weeklong meat and dairy fast.
Bed by 5.
***
Up by 8. My cousin Jennifer arrived in Istanbul on Sunday, April 15. I had to get to the airport to pick her up because, well, it's easier to figure out the city when someone helps you along and I think it's good hospitality.
Her flight was delayed and didn't get in until 1pm or so, after circling over the Sea of Marmara for a while. But find Jennifer I did, and off we went to meander towards her hostel, a placed named Istanbul Hostel (creative, no?) in Sultanahmet, behind the Hağia Sofia and Blue Mosque.
With her stuff all dropped off, we went to explore a bit. I devoted all of Sunday to showing Jennifer around, since she was only in town until late Wednesday night, and I had a midterm on Tuesday I needed to study for. This was my second visitor in Istanbul, and while I'm still perfecting my tour guide skills, we were quite efficient in our explorations. Another visit to Hağia Sofia, more delicious food than any real human would care to consume in a day, etc.
We ended up in Ortaköy for some çay, nargile and tavla in the evening, where we sat for a long while. But enough is enough - I had been procrastinating studying for my Alexander the Great midterm all week, and needed to get a good nights sleep to study all Monday. I sent Jennifer home in a cab around 11pm. I returned to campus, also in a cab, to sleep.
***
Monday I studied. Isabelle, Rhys, Ben and I spent pretty much all day in various locations and combinations of people looking at maps, memorizing dates, and refreshing our memories about the life and times of Alexander the Great and all of his contemporaries.
Ascended in 336 BC, died 323 BC. Student of Aristotle, classmate of Callisthenes, whom he later had killed. Son of Philip II and Olympias, believed to be the son of Zeus Ammon. Hated Thebes, Darius, and forward thinking. Loved battles, Persian culture, and exploration. My brain was overflowing with satrapies (Thrace, Macedonia, Illyria, Lycia, Lydia, Babylonia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Phyrgia, Capadoccia, Mesopotamia), battles (Chaeronia, Thebes, Granicus, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Issus, Tyre, Gaugamela, Persian Gates, Sogdian Rock, Aornus Rock, Hydaspes), rivers (Danube, Tigris, Euphrates, Hydaspes, Indus, Tarsus, Nile), sources (Justin, Curtius Rufus, Diodorus, Arrian, Plutarch, Callisthenes*, Ptolemy*, Aristobulus*, Clietarchus*), and names (Aristotle, Callisthenes, Permenion, Darius, Memnon, Porus). It was quite overwhelming.
Before I went to bed, I got an email from Leslie, my new friend whom I met in Georgia while she was on break from her English teacher job in Gori visiting Tbilisi. She was in town with her boyfriend Bernhard/Bernie, who was on his way back to Austria via Istanbul. I told them I'd work on meeting up with them.
***
But in the end, it paid off. I think I did pretty decently on the midterm, which is more than I can say for Historiography the week before, where I legitimately didn't understand the question - but that's a story for another post. I studied all morning on Tuesday and took the test at 2, finishing at 4, an hour early.
After the test, Yunus and I met up to go to Akmerkez for cigars. The day before he had reminded me that there would be a boat party on Tuesday night, and that I should come. So I contacted Jennifer with the idea, who was going to come up to my school and see the area there anyway that night, and she was excited by the idea too. I also ran it past Bernie and Leslie, who agreed the morning of to come as well.
Yunus and I went to a cigar shop in Akmerkez because it seemed the perfect time to pay up for a good cigar is when you can smoke it on the Bosporus in the middle of the night with a bunch of your friends on a mini booze cruise. We found Cubans for 35TL each, which isn't bad when you consider the distance they've traveled and Turkey's absurd import laws and sin taxes. I would have paid $10-15 for a cigar of this quality in the states, and this wasn't much more than that.
With the cigars purchased, I went to campus to purchase tickets for the boat party for myself, Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie, returned to my room and passed the time before Jennifer would arrive. When the time came, I went to the south campus gates and waited.
Jennifer arrived in good time, but Leslie and Bernie did not. We waited and waited, and they finally showed up around 7:30. They had invited a friend of theirs to join us for dinner, and she arrived around 8:15. The five of us proceeded to Mutfak for a quick dinner, then to Nexus for a few beers, then to Bebek for a waffle before meeting the boat at 9:30 outside Taps.
Katrin, the second Austrian, had no ticket. She's studying at Koç University in Sariyer, and was planning on going back to her school instead of going out, since she had somewhere to be in the morning. But we convinced her to join, and since some people who had bought tickets hadn't showed up, she got on the boat.
Yunus and I lit up our cigars when we got past the bridge just near campus. The boat brought us up the Bosporus, past the gorgeous and campus-adjacent Rumeli Hisar that I have yet to visit, to a calm section of water near the Asian side, where we stopped for a few hours.
The boat was tons of fun. We brought our own alcohol, and they had beer on the boat they were selling for cheap bar prices. That, the fact that I had a plus 4 with me, the fact that more than half of the Duke program was there (Kate, Isabelle, Jake, Ladd, Ellen, Savannah, Hillary, Rhys, Sara, Sarah, and me), and that several other friends were there (Paige, Yunus, Glenn, Becca, Emre, and more), made it a most enjoyable experience.
We docked back in Bebek around 2:30am. Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie went back in a cab towards Lower Beyoğlu and Sultanahmet, Katrin headed north to Sariyer, and I went with some peoples to Nexus for a while.
***
On Wednesday, I went to class in the morning, then hopped a bus to Sultanahmet to meet Jennifer, Leslie and Bernie. We got lunch at Home Made near Gulhane tramway (where the Canadians I met one night with Jonas when we first arrived here took us). It was whelming, neither over or under.
The four of us went to explore Topkapı Palace, the last place to see for Jennifer, who had had a very successful few days on Monday and on Tuesday morning seeing the other sights we had missed on Sunday. I had to leave Topkapı early though, as I had to go register for classes for next semester at Wash U.
My registration time was 5:30. Well, 9:30 CST. But one of the blessings of being 8 hours ahead of St. Louis is I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to register.
Anyways, I got all the classes I wanted and needed, and now I have no class on Mondays or Fridays next semester, with only a night class on Wednesdays. Pretty sweet deal.
Leslie and Bernie headed back to their hostel after the palace, so I didn't see them again. But Jennifer and I met up and wandered around for a bit. She had tickets to go see a whirling dervishes performance, and I waited for her at my favorite çay bahçesi and nargile kafe near Çemberlitaş. I smoked some nargile and watched Step Brothers on a laptop while drinking tea. It was fairly glorious.
Dinner was at Dürümzade, my go-to 24-hour dürüm place. Then some last minute shopping for snacks and candies (Baklava and Lokum - aka Turkish Delight) before we got to the Havataş bus stop in the pouring rain around 10. We said our goodbyes, I put Jennifer on the bus, and she was gone -- back to China.
I got on the bus back to school which, by some miracle and because Turks hate standing out in the rain waiting for the bus, was only occupied by up to five people at a time the whole way back. I got to stretch out, dry off my raincoat on the horizontal stabilization bars, and relax. It was fantastic.
***
Thursday was a day for me. Nothing special. Oh, except that my friend Peter told me I could work for him for a month in Kiev during Eurocup! The dates basically go from right after my program ends until a week or two before I have to be in London for a family trip from July 20-26. So that's exciting.
***
After Karanfil's philosophy class, which was he first I've attended in a month, due to weekly class cancellations, Rhys, Ladd, Savannah, Sarah Shaughnessy, Jake and I went downtown to attempt the Archaeological Museum, which turned out to be closed, and to walk through Gulhane park, which is displaying an epic number of tulips for the seventh annual Tulip Festival in Istanbul.
We took some photos of the tulips and had a nice meandering walk, finishing up at a çay bahçesi that sits on the Bosporus overlooking the Golden Horn. For 5TL each we got a large pot of hot water, with a smaller pot of concentrated tea sitting on top. You use a strainer to pour the tea into your glass, then dilute it with the boiling water. I like this style, as I prefer a stronger tea, so I can decide how strong to make my tea.
We headed back around 6:15, where I had an epiphany. Jake and Ladd had discovered the worlds greatest way to get back to school without sitting in rush hour traffic. At 5:50 and 6:40, a ferry leaves from Eminönü, with stops in Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Arnavutköy, and Bebek. It's a 45 minute ride, at a time of day when a bus ride from Kabataş would take as long, if not longer. And it costs the same, 1TL with my student discount Istanbulkart, and it's a Bosporus boat ride. Amazing.
When we got back to Bebek, we had dinner at Upper Crust, a pizza place that comes incredibly close to having real pizza. Then we walked up the hill to Rumeli, and got a beer or two at To Stage (aka Toh Sta-gé) before heading back to the dorm.
***
Saturday was a jam packed day. I went downtown to meet Rhys, Jake, Ben, Ladd and Ellen at the Archaeological Museum, where we found a brand new wing I had never seen before. It stretched on forever and had some amazing items from the Istanbul area, from ancient times to the present.
Next we briskly walked back through Gulhane and had another experience at the çay bahçesi on the water. We got the 5:40 ferry back, bumping into Elliot as we boarded. Elliot, Ladd, and Ellen kept going back to Bebek. Jake, Rhys, Ben and I stopped off at Beşiktaş. We got a little food and went into a bowling alley across from the Beşiktaş bus stop.
We had talked about bowling the day before, so we were very excited to do this. The four of us only paid 18TL each for three games. We had a pretty competitive set of scores (Ben excluded, whose bowling skills are not quite as honed as the rest of us), both per game and, though less so, in overall score. I won the first two games with scores of 105 and 122, Jake won the third game with 122. Overall I scored 330, Jake 303, and Rhys 275. Ben came in at 135. It was great fun, and bowling with black light lighting, Efes beer from a paper cup and some friends is always exciting.
We left the alley and caught a bus around 8:30. We got back to Rumeli Hisarüstü at 9.
Which was perfect, because Zefir, a friend of a bunch of us whom we met while he was working at Mutfak, had invited us to his birthday party. He was turning 24. Isabelle, Savannah, Rhys, Kate, Sara, Sarah, Ben and I went to the party.
If you could call it a party. It was hilariously awkward. A bunch of us, four of his guy friends, and a girl from Boğaziçi, standing around speaking two languages, none of us speaking the other well, with music in the background, in an apartment with such incredible potential to be either a badass hangout or a serial killer hideout. The view was incredible, of the Bosporus on the far side of the second bridge. The balcony was huge, though barren, and the rooms were, well, interesting. We had a good time regardless, though a few of us left a little before midnight, myself included. Isabelle, Ben and I headed out, and had ourselves dropped off in the heart of Rumeli.
The three of us had dinner at Doydos, after which Ben headed back to the dorm. Isabelle and I went to To Stage to meet up with Glenn and some of his friends.
There I met Dila and Ayça, new people! I like meeting new people. They made me finish their beers ("made" is probably too strong a word. They thought the beer was flat, which it wasn't, and I offered to finish it up for them), and they and Josh, one of Glenn's friends whom I met at Yunus' party, took me to Nexus when Isabelle and Glenn decided to meander back to their respective abodes.
I was out at Nexus until 1:30 or 2, enjoying decent beer and good conversation. But I had to return to the dorm, because we had a 4:30 pick up for the Duke program's spring break vacation to the Black Sea region of Turkey. Oh, I don't think I mentioned we are on Spring Break now. Well, we are.
I didn't sleep, just finished some packing and watched some Futurama, skyped home and some friends and headed to the bus at 4:30.
***
*Sources do not survive today, but are referred to by the other authors.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
I Was Raised Underneath the Shade of a Georgia Pine...
I had been in Turkey for 61 days. Prior to leaving the United States on January 3, the longest I had ever been outside of the country was 67 days. I had been in Turkey for almost as long as I had ever been abroad in a single stretch. I was getting anxious. Well, mostly, the fact that I hadn't been able to get a resident permit made me feel claustrophobic and anxious. That's not to say Turkey doesn't have some amazing treasures to be discovered; it most certainly does, and I have enjoyed discovering a few of these. But now, having picked up my permit last Wednesday, I embarked this past Friday for a new scene: Georgia.
Usually I write these things as I go, and thus can be incredibly detailed as to my actions and reactions as they occur. But I am writing this in retrospect, so I will split this up into two sections. The first will be a recounting, to the best of my memory, of what went on last weekend. The second, and significantly shorter, section will be my general reactions to certain things that occurred/I noticed. So without further ado, please read below;
Part 1: Actions
Day 1:
I had a late flight to Tbilisi on March 30, leaving at 11:40pm, arriving sometime in the middle of the night at 2:50am on the 31st. I was to be staying at Why Not? Legend Hostel, which is owned and operated by Peter, my Polish friend who I met in Kiev, where he owns another Why Not? Hostel. In fact, much of the decision making behind ending up in Tbilisi was that I had no one to travel with from the Istanbul area (none of the Duke kids had their residents permits yet) and I felt like seeing someone I knew, as well as somewhere new. I picked up some baklava for him/the hostel on my way to the airport, as well as a bottle of Yani Rakı at the airport.
Peter sent a car for me -- there's a man who works for the hostel as a driver and pretty much exclusively does airport transfers for 20GEL (Lari is the Georgian currency, exchange rate circa 1.6GEL per 1USD at the time of my visit). Seeing as the ride is about 30 minutes from the airport, it seemed like a great deal. Little did I realize how much things in general cost in the city... It's quite cheap.
I arrived at the Hostel at about 3:45am, where Peter, on night duty, opened the gate for me.
The hostel is located in this tiny little alleyway just a few blocks from Rustaveli Ave, the main street in Tbilisi. A large banner hangs in the street pointing out the hostel, and a circular sticker on a gate indicates which door to enter. Of course, I misread the signage and rang the wrong bell, but I'm not sure if I woke anyone up, as I remedied my mistake quickly. From the outside the hostel looks quite absurd. Ramshackle walls and roofing, as well as a rickety set of steps up to the second-floor entranceway make for a less-than-exceptional first impression. But it was also almost 4 in the morning and I was in no mood to be open minded about things.
Peter showed me to my room, where he had pre-made my bed because everyone else in the room was sleeping already. I had the top bunk at the top of the stairs in a 6-person dorm room. I threw my stuff down by my bed and went back downstairs to put the baklava in the fridge. Peter and I spent a little time talking, and around 4:30 I went to bed, trying to climb quietly into a very, very creaky top bunk.
Day 2:
I awoke Saturday morning around 8:30. It felt much later, but I was well rested enough and the light from the open window was saturating the room. I went downstairs, and pulled out my iPad to check my emails on the couch.
The common area of the hostel takes up almost the entire first floor (of the hostel, second floor of the building. And I mean this in terms of the American first/second floor, where the ground level is floor 1, not the European version with ground level at floor 0). There's a couch against the wall by the stairs to the second floor, with a small table and a comfy chair on the opposite side facing the wall. Some bean bag chairs sit in the corner. A fireplace lay fallow (well, since the Winter) in the middle, with a large chest of sheets and towels and blankets adjacent. When you walk in, taking your shoes off in the entrance hallway, the aforementioned items are on your left and straight ahead, and on your right is the kitchen door and a square dining table. Spacious is the first word I can think to describe the place, as it is both uncluttered and made grander with what was probably a 1.5 or maybe even 2-story ceiling. But I digress.
I sat down to check my emails. I had sat next to an American, whose first words to me were, "would you like an inspiration beer?" It was 9:00am at the latest. I declined. Then Benjy showed up - A Stuttgart native and chef by trade who works at the hostel. He asked me where I was coming in from, and when I told him Istanbul, he creepily knew my name and several things about me (from Peter, it turns out), like the fact that I was "here to party." I told him I was there for that and some relaxation, but he just cared about the first reason.
It took the two of them, Benjy and the American, Kyle, less than an hour to get me to start drinking with them. I haven't been out partying at all recently, so it didn't take long to get me drunk - especially when Benjy found out I had brought Rakı and started pouring us shots of the stuff.
Soon after we started we were joined by Timo, from Finland. Around 11am three of us (excluding Benjy who was sticking around the hostel) went exploring. The idea was to hit up some museums that Kyle wanted to see, but we were all pretty pissed and just ended up wandering. Well, church-hopping is probably a better word for it.
We made our way up Rustaveli Ave towards Tavisupleba Square (Independence Square.. I think..), where we made a 210 degree turn to go down Pushkin Street. Somewhere in there (I think, it's a bit fuzzy) we came across our first church, which we went into and marveled at. It was very Russian Orthodox influenced. But we couldn't stay long, we had more churches to see.
I don't know where we found it, or how, but we stumbled around noon on a restaurant. Georgians don't have much of a dining-out culture, so restaurants seem to be few and far between. But the one we found had outdoor seating, and it was a very nice day.
We ordered two Georgian favorites for lunch, which I only knew about because Kyle is living near Tbilisi in a small village teaching English and has learned such things (as well as a little bit of the language). The food was khachapuri and khinkali. The former is a cheesy-bread that is served either in a pizza shape and sliced, or in a form much like Turkish pide, a boat of bread with cheese inside. Sometimes the khachapuri comes with a raw egg cracked inside the boat. Khinkali is a dish very similar to 包子, a Chinese steamed bun. It's filled with meat and, when steamed, gathers a broth inside the bun. The Georgians eat khinkali with their hands, biting a small portion off the side and sucking the broth out, then eating the rest of it a little at a time, avoiding the over-floury 'stem.' We also got a ton of beer, to keep our drunkenness up. Natakhtaki is the local cheap beer, and it is surprisingly delicious.
After lunch and a dessert of a dried-fruit/flour combo that a string of nuts are dipped into like a candle on a wick (found it on the street, and it's amazing), we found ourselves at church number 2. This was was much more colorful than the first, with lots of blue and red and paintings/frescos covering all the walls. But it was still very Russian Orthodox, to no one's surprise.
Our third church was a synagogue. I spotted it from church 2 (a tiny menorah stuck out above the buildings). The gates were locked, but with Kyle's broken Georgian we managed to get the guard to let us in. Timo and Kyle were fascinated by the interior. I don't know about Kyle, who's half-Jewish but raised without a religion, but I think it was Timo's first time in a synagogue. The bimah was in the center of the shul, and a small section in the back left, separated by curtains, was reserved for the women. It was the Sabbath this day but I believe we were between services at the time of our arrival -- many books had been left open on certain pages.
We ended up at church number 4 a short while later, where I was handed a candle that Kyle had bough, and told to make a wish or prayer. I did so, lighting my candle from one of the other candles and leaving it planted in the sand next to two dozen more. Hey, if I can get a non-Jew to don a yamulke, why can't I make a wish for world peace (well, I can't tell you what I really wished... it wouldn't come true then!) in a church? This church was darker and more depressing, with a large blue cross-embroidered curtain instead of a traditional Russian Orthodox walled off section.
Our fifth and final church was at the top of a nearby hill/cliff, inside the old Tbilisi fortress. It was quite a walk, but the view was pretty incredible. We scaled the fortress walls and wandered amongst the ruined portions of it. We also found a bell sitting on the wall that I was stupid enough to give a light tap... and got yelled at by the priest for doing so. Someone in Tbilisi thought it was 1:00 because of me... when it was really something like 2:30. Whoops.
We wandered along the ridge for a while, coming to a large statue of a woman with a sword. Someone told me the significance later, but I forget. I believe it has something to do with Communism.
Coming back to the hostel around 4, we were coming down from our drunk. We attempted to keep it going, but the fact that Benjy was cooking an outstanding barbeque dinner for us all with magical alcohol-absorbing properties, it was hard to do so.
At dinner I met some others whom I spent time with over the next few days. Caitlin, a Boston native (I think?), Timmy and Patrick, two Canadians. Patrick is from Quebec, teaching here, and Timmy is as well, but traveling, visiting his childhood friend Patrick. Also met Leslie, from the US on a Fulbright to teach English in Gori (Stalin's hometown), and her Austrian boyfriend Bernhard, visiting for 3 weeks.
After dinner, all the above-mentioned people traversed with Benjy a bar down the street a ways, behind the Radisson Blu hotel. It was an expat bar for non-Georgians, but a fun place nonetheless. I spent my time with Leslie and Bernhard, and some others we met there (including one very nice man from Tehran who insists I come visit him), as Benjy and the rest seemed to disappear randomly to go to a club, and were too drunk to remember to grab us on the way.
Sleep was early enough, around 2am. I had been thrown full-throttle into hostel living.
Day 3:
Caitlin, Timmy, Patrick, Kyle and I decided to attempt, sober this time, to go to a museum of Georgian art. We never made it inside. Partially because we got distracted by a doll museum, but also because the student price of 1 Lari entrance was reasonable, but to get a required guide to go through the museum would have been an outrageous 3 Lari ($2) per person in total. Unacceptable.
But the doll museum was cool, down by the Mtkvari River on N. Baratashvili Street. Also incredibly cheap for entry, we just had to check it out. And wow, was it creepy.
Dolls from all over the world, some large, some small, some funny, some frightening, surrounded us. A fat asian baby smiling creepily. An old Georgian woman with beady eyes staring you down. A marionette keeping tabs on you, strung up but menacing. I was ready to leave quite quickly.
We walked back to the hostel, stopping only to make the above-mentioned attempt at the actual art museum.
That evening, Benjy took Timmy and Patrick and I to a little underground restaurant. It was upscale, despite being inside a former cellar, and served great beer and incredible food. Peter joined us after a short time. We had for dinner some sort of eggplant dish with a spread topped with cranberries, a chicken and onion salad that was divine, a steamed mushroom/lettuce/onion combination, two types of prepared chicken with fries, a pork dish with onions, khacahpuri (of course), and beer. The total meal came out to 54.50GEL, 11GEL per person. It was that cheap.
Benjy went to meet some friend of his, but Peter, Timmy, Patrick and I went to the Georgian bathhouse.
Turkish Hammam's are more like saunas. Georgian bathhouses are sulfur baths. Apparently many Georgian men tend to go to these Banyos with prostitutes, but we just went with the four of us (maybe the full experience should be saved for the second Tbilisi visit?).
We rented a private room for 40GEL, 10 each, and Patrick and I paid an extra 20 each for the scrub-down which, like in a Turkish Hammam, is supposed to do wonders - it peels off a layer of skin and is supposed to be a great massage.
What we didn't realize was the fact that, 35 minutes into our hour-long soak, a large naked Georgian man would waltz into the room, beckon for us to lose our shorts, and thoroughly scrub down every inch of us. Every inch.
Well, it wasn't quite as bad as that makes it sound. He only walked in naked. Then he put on shorts. THEN he made Patrick, who went first, take his off and lie on the slab. The rest I chose to not watch, but when it was my turn, he had me lie prone on the slab while he scraped off my skin with a special glove. Everywhere. Then I lay supine while he repeated the process. After that, I sat up on the edge of the table, and he rested my arms across his protruding stomach and kept scrubbing away at those. After that a gigantic soapy sponge was pressed to my face and made to fall all over me. And then came the super-ultra-hot sulfur water to wash me off.
Dignity gone, I didn't bother reclothing when I jumped back into the bath. We finished up our hour, rinsed off in the provided freshwater showers (to smell a little less like eggs) and went on our merry way. Quite the experience...
Late that night, around 10pm, Patrick and I set out to go to the casino. We stopped first by the Casino Iveria Tbilisi, in the ground floor of the Radisson Blu. But they didn't have Texas Hold-em, so we left. Next we went to the Shangri La, which was quite a walk along the river by the glass pedestrian bridge, known locally as the Always bridge, since the newly constructed monstrosity holds a striking resemblance to a maxipad.
The women at the front desk, each one named Ana, insisted they had Texas Hold'em upstairs. So we registered with them, and were given ID numbers (I am 32468) and cards to go with them, so they could keep track of what we spent and lost.
They did not have Texas Hold'em. That is to say, they did, but only as a game against the dealer... so basically blackjack, but more confusing and sillier.
I took 50GEL around midnight and laid the money down at the Blackjack table. Patrick did the same, with 20GEL. I was given 30 in chips and Patrick 10. Confused, I pointed to the sign that said "Minimum Bet 10" and asked why I only got 30. It turns out we were playing in US Dollars.
Upset, but not disheartened, I took my $30 (three minimum bets) and started playing. Patrick put his first and last bet on the table too. He lost, I won. I invited him to sit with me while I played for a bit.
30 minutes later I had multiplied my buy-in by a factor of at least 7. Patrick, who speaks Russian (oh, everyone in the place was speaking Russian or Ukrainian... it seems Georgians can't afford this casino, or it caters to the mafia/oligarchy), started hearing the floor managers whisper to each other, glancing in my direction as I continuously raked in more and more chips. At one point, the manager whispered to the dealer at my table, who responded in Russian, "are you sure?" He then started giving me more scrutinizing glances as I made my betting choices.
It may sound paranoid, because I wasn't winning much in the grand scheme of things. But I had lost maybe 10 hands out of the last half hour. For whatever reason, I just wasn't losing. And every time I had a stack that matched my original buyin, I pushed that $30 off to the side, so if I lost what I let myself keep I would walk away with a profit. And I was winning very quickly. Our theory is that they thought I was counting cards. Whatever the reason, when the bouncers started standing behind me to watch me play, I thought it time to cash out, and did so with great haste. I walked away from that casino having paid for my flight to Tbilisi and all the expenses I incurred or would incur during the rest of the weekend. I also walked away with more money made in 40 minutes than most Georgians earn in a month.
Day 4:
On this day, Timo, Patrick, Timmy and another Canadian (whose name I just can't remember, so we'll call him Ian) and I went to Gori, hometown of the late Joseph Stalin.
To get there, we took the metro (which, like in most former soviet countries, is clean, in great working order, way underground to double as a bomb shelter, with trains that move quickly and arrive frequently) to Didube, where the Marshrutkas leave from. We could have gotten a cab ride there for an absurd amount of money, but as is the Marshrutka only cost 5GEL each. We left Tbilisi around 10, arriving in Gori just under an hour later.
We were dropped off just behind the Stalin Museum, which was build next to his childhood home, where he was born and lived for 4 years. His home is still there, in its original splendor (it was quite a squalid situation). His family rented one of the two rooms for themselves and their son Joseph. The neighborhood around it was demolished for the museum and park surrounding it. But it's a simple enough affair, covered by a Stalinist Gothic-style pavilion with hammer sickles and stars overhead.
The museum itself is just the story of Stalin's life, from his humble childhood to his early involvement with Lenin at the very beginning of the revolution (which never happened). We were showed pictures of Stalin carrying Lenin's coffin at his funeral (which didn't happen), and all kinds of other wonderful, completely authentic items, like a young Stalin looking like Groucho Marx. Speaking of which, the pictures they showed created a wonderful image of the evolution of Stalin's mustache!
After the museum our guide took us to his personal rail carriage. Stalin hated to fly, and he took the train everywhere. The carriage was bulletproof and reinforced, and its what he rode everywhere. I actually got to go into his cabin and sit on his personal bed! Then we were let into his house itself, instead of standing outside. Really cool.
In the landlord's room, the adjacent room to Stalin's first home, we found a bunch of letters, amongst other items, that Stalin had written to his mother. What a mamma's boy! My personal favorite, letter is as follows. Keep in mind that at the time, Stalin was the leader of the largest nation on the planet.
"Greetings mother dear!
I got your letter. It's nice that you don't forget us. It is my fault that I didn't write to you, but what to do? I was very busy and I had no time for letters.
Take care of your health. Tell me if you are in need of something. Nadya will send you your medicine.
I feel well.
Live a thousand years.
Your Soso.
22.12.1931"
Really? He thinks she would forget him? What a shame! If my child were one of the most powerful men in the world, I probably wouldn't forget the guy. Apparently the Georgians have a joke: Englishmen have a wife and a lover, and love their wife. Frenchmen have a wife and a lover, and love their lover. Italians have a wife and a lover, and love them both. Georgians have a wife and a lover, and love their mother. Stalin was a true Georgian, then.
After the museum, we said goodbye to Patrick, who had to make the 6 hour trek back to his village. The remaining four of us walked down to the river Mejuda, and followed it for a short while until we hit the Gori Fortress.
There's nothing in the fortress besides the crumbling walls, but the view is magnificent. From the fortress, we could see the whole of Gori, as well as the countryside surrounding it. Beautiful, and windy.
Our next stop was food. I have a theory, that you haven't really been to a place until you've satisfied three of the four following requirements: one thing touristy, one bathroom trip, one meal, and one night's sleep. We had accomplished the first two at the museum. The third was found on Stalin Avenue, just before the major intersection at Chavchavadze Street. A little restaurant, where we ordered khinkali, khachapuri and some new things, like barbecue chicken (with basically no barbecue). It was good, and so cheap, as usual.
Next we headed to the marshrutkas on Chavchavadze Street, just before the River Liakhvi. We got a cab for 15 Lari round trip to a place called Uplistsikhe, a cave town near Gori. It was about a 30 minute drive, and I slept the whole way. But the four of us were crowded into the cab, and it was quite cheap to make the run, especially since the driver would wait for us at the place.
Upon arrival, we asked the cab driver to wait an hour in broken Russian. He said it would cost another 5GEL. We agreed, as 20 is what we had expected to pay at the beginning. We paid 1GEL for entry each. Student prices rock.
Uplistsikhe is in one of the windiest places I've ever been. We found ourselves on multiple occasions fighting the wind to just stand. But it's a beautiful location. People have inhabited this place as far back as 1,000 BC. They used the caves as their homes. There were underground access tunnels, too, which meant they could be besieged and still have water access from the nearby river. Timo and I wandered up to the top of the settlement, which promised breathtaking views. Timmy joined us, with his Jesus-hair whipping across his face. Ian lagged behind somewhere. I'm not totally sure what held him up.
As our hour of hurricane winds-infested exploration wound to a close, we headed back. But Ian fell way behind us, and we didn't know where he was when we got back to the car park. We had to send Timmy back in to get him.
In the car park, we bumped into Leslie and Bernhard, who had returned to Gori the night before and came to Uplistsikhe on Leslie's extended lunch break from teaching.
We got back to the marshrutka parking lot in Gori much faster than our original trip, making me think that perhaps the driver had gotten lost the first time. I handed him 20GEL to pay, expecting 5GEL in change. See, we had paid him 5 upon arrival in Uplistsikhe, so we only had 15 more to pay. But he said something about waiting, and didn't want to remember the 5 we had already paid him. Frustrated, I snagged the 20GEL from his hands and scrounged 15 from the rest of us, gave him that, and we left the car with him yelling at us in the background.
We got on a Marshrutka leaving 10 minutes later, and by 5:30 had arrived in Tbilisi.
I parted ways with the guys at this point, and went to a little cafe near the Doll Museum to meet Ana, one of my brother's friends from UChicago, who lives here.
We were to meet at 6 at the cafe by the Gabriadze theater. Ana was late, stuck in traffic, but we had a few drinks and chatted for about an hour.
Around 7:30 Ana had to meet her mother, who was getting off work, for something, so we parted ways, and I walked back to the hostel.
At Why Not?, I found Timmy cooking dinner for himself. He offered me some, and I couldn't refuse. It was a conglomeration of whatever he found at the supermarket. Some chicken, smoked cheese, and all sorts of vegetables. Quite good.
Later, I went on a souvenir run with Benjy. See, alcohol in Istanbul is absurdly expensive, so I went out and bought a bottle of Georgian wine and a bottle of a Georgian liquor called ჭაჭა, or Chacha. It's foul stuff, but it's what the people drink, so I must do the same. We got the stuff from a local winery - in Georgia, that's a place where they crush grapes and bury the juices in clay pots in the ground for months on end to let them ferment - just down the street. Really cool place.
Jonas and I had to buy the Why Not? Kiev hostel a bread knife when we were there. They really needed it. And so did Tbilisi. So I got one at the supermarket while we were out. Peter was very appreciative of the purchase.
Around 1 in the morning I went out to get eggs. I made egg in a hole for those of us still awake. Peter was very upset that I hadn't told him I could make breakfast, and was just mooching off of the free breakfast each morning instead of cooking for him. I told him I'd cook all he wanted if he hired me in Kiev this summer (I'm pushing for a month of employment with him). We'll see how that works out later.
I had a 4:40 flight back to Istanbul, arriving at 6am. I didn't sleep. just before 3 I left for the airport, and worked my way to the plane. I slept on the flight, but that was it. I went straight from the airport the next morning to class. It was a miserable day of classes. But worth it. So worth it.
Part 2: Reactions
Gori is apparently the only place in Georgia that still likes Stalin somewhat. His policies affected the Georgians at large so negatively, only those in his hometown still consider him a hero of sorts... well, some of them. Apparently if you get a tour guide at the museum who likes Stalin, she'll skip the part of the tour where they show you the Soviet atrocities. Our tour guide showed it to us. It's a hit or miss liking of Stalin.
Among things I didn't know about Georgia; the 2008 South Ossetia war is still being waged. The fighting has ceased, but the Russians still occupy South Ossetia. Also, when they first invaded, they actually marched through Georgia, not just South Ossetia, as far as Gori. They turned back before going through to Tbilisi. Apparently, though I didn't know at the time, in Gori you can find marks on the walls from bullets near the museum. The only reason they didn't go through to Tbilisi is apparently that they didn't want the bad press of invading a neighboring capital city. And I heard that European presidents and prime ministers were taking turns "babysitting" Tbilisi. That is, they were taking turns spending the night in the city so that if the Russians attacked, they could call it an attack on their country, and retaliate. Essentially, had Russia invaded Tbilisi, they would immediately be the bad guys, more so than they already were by invading in the first place. Does that make sense?
Georgian food seems to be a blend of Chinese, Turkish, and Russian food. Surprise surprise. But I still find it interesting.
The buildings in Tbilisi are old and faded. The city very clearly had its heyday in the Russian Empire, and during Soviet times let themselves go a bit. They haven't yet refurbished the city on the outside, though I hear the inside of the buildings are generally renovated and modern. But from the outside looking in, even the nicer buildings are tired and worn. Oh, and there are still plenty of buildings that are legitimately crumbling or completely fallen apart, wooden and stone/brick buildings alike.
I would honestly love to go back at some point. It was a really fascinating culture. Though I should learn to read their scribbly script. It's really strange -- I think it's the first place I've ever been where literally EVERYTHING was unreadable. Even in Korea, the occasional Chinese character popped up, and in Ukraine/Belarus I could sort of read the cyrillic. But Georgian script is indecipherable.
That's all I have for now. Until the next one!
Usually I write these things as I go, and thus can be incredibly detailed as to my actions and reactions as they occur. But I am writing this in retrospect, so I will split this up into two sections. The first will be a recounting, to the best of my memory, of what went on last weekend. The second, and significantly shorter, section will be my general reactions to certain things that occurred/I noticed. So without further ado, please read below;
Part 1: Actions
Day 1:
I had a late flight to Tbilisi on March 30, leaving at 11:40pm, arriving sometime in the middle of the night at 2:50am on the 31st. I was to be staying at Why Not? Legend Hostel, which is owned and operated by Peter, my Polish friend who I met in Kiev, where he owns another Why Not? Hostel. In fact, much of the decision making behind ending up in Tbilisi was that I had no one to travel with from the Istanbul area (none of the Duke kids had their residents permits yet) and I felt like seeing someone I knew, as well as somewhere new. I picked up some baklava for him/the hostel on my way to the airport, as well as a bottle of Yani Rakı at the airport.
Peter sent a car for me -- there's a man who works for the hostel as a driver and pretty much exclusively does airport transfers for 20GEL (Lari is the Georgian currency, exchange rate circa 1.6GEL per 1USD at the time of my visit). Seeing as the ride is about 30 minutes from the airport, it seemed like a great deal. Little did I realize how much things in general cost in the city... It's quite cheap.
I arrived at the Hostel at about 3:45am, where Peter, on night duty, opened the gate for me.
The hostel is located in this tiny little alleyway just a few blocks from Rustaveli Ave, the main street in Tbilisi. A large banner hangs in the street pointing out the hostel, and a circular sticker on a gate indicates which door to enter. Of course, I misread the signage and rang the wrong bell, but I'm not sure if I woke anyone up, as I remedied my mistake quickly. From the outside the hostel looks quite absurd. Ramshackle walls and roofing, as well as a rickety set of steps up to the second-floor entranceway make for a less-than-exceptional first impression. But it was also almost 4 in the morning and I was in no mood to be open minded about things.
Peter showed me to my room, where he had pre-made my bed because everyone else in the room was sleeping already. I had the top bunk at the top of the stairs in a 6-person dorm room. I threw my stuff down by my bed and went back downstairs to put the baklava in the fridge. Peter and I spent a little time talking, and around 4:30 I went to bed, trying to climb quietly into a very, very creaky top bunk.
Day 2:
I awoke Saturday morning around 8:30. It felt much later, but I was well rested enough and the light from the open window was saturating the room. I went downstairs, and pulled out my iPad to check my emails on the couch.
The common area of the hostel takes up almost the entire first floor (of the hostel, second floor of the building. And I mean this in terms of the American first/second floor, where the ground level is floor 1, not the European version with ground level at floor 0). There's a couch against the wall by the stairs to the second floor, with a small table and a comfy chair on the opposite side facing the wall. Some bean bag chairs sit in the corner. A fireplace lay fallow (well, since the Winter) in the middle, with a large chest of sheets and towels and blankets adjacent. When you walk in, taking your shoes off in the entrance hallway, the aforementioned items are on your left and straight ahead, and on your right is the kitchen door and a square dining table. Spacious is the first word I can think to describe the place, as it is both uncluttered and made grander with what was probably a 1.5 or maybe even 2-story ceiling. But I digress.
I sat down to check my emails. I had sat next to an American, whose first words to me were, "would you like an inspiration beer?" It was 9:00am at the latest. I declined. Then Benjy showed up - A Stuttgart native and chef by trade who works at the hostel. He asked me where I was coming in from, and when I told him Istanbul, he creepily knew my name and several things about me (from Peter, it turns out), like the fact that I was "here to party." I told him I was there for that and some relaxation, but he just cared about the first reason.
It took the two of them, Benjy and the American, Kyle, less than an hour to get me to start drinking with them. I haven't been out partying at all recently, so it didn't take long to get me drunk - especially when Benjy found out I had brought Rakı and started pouring us shots of the stuff.
Soon after we started we were joined by Timo, from Finland. Around 11am three of us (excluding Benjy who was sticking around the hostel) went exploring. The idea was to hit up some museums that Kyle wanted to see, but we were all pretty pissed and just ended up wandering. Well, church-hopping is probably a better word for it.
We made our way up Rustaveli Ave towards Tavisupleba Square (Independence Square.. I think..), where we made a 210 degree turn to go down Pushkin Street. Somewhere in there (I think, it's a bit fuzzy) we came across our first church, which we went into and marveled at. It was very Russian Orthodox influenced. But we couldn't stay long, we had more churches to see.
I don't know where we found it, or how, but we stumbled around noon on a restaurant. Georgians don't have much of a dining-out culture, so restaurants seem to be few and far between. But the one we found had outdoor seating, and it was a very nice day.
We ordered two Georgian favorites for lunch, which I only knew about because Kyle is living near Tbilisi in a small village teaching English and has learned such things (as well as a little bit of the language). The food was khachapuri and khinkali. The former is a cheesy-bread that is served either in a pizza shape and sliced, or in a form much like Turkish pide, a boat of bread with cheese inside. Sometimes the khachapuri comes with a raw egg cracked inside the boat. Khinkali is a dish very similar to 包子, a Chinese steamed bun. It's filled with meat and, when steamed, gathers a broth inside the bun. The Georgians eat khinkali with their hands, biting a small portion off the side and sucking the broth out, then eating the rest of it a little at a time, avoiding the over-floury 'stem.' We also got a ton of beer, to keep our drunkenness up. Natakhtaki is the local cheap beer, and it is surprisingly delicious.
After lunch and a dessert of a dried-fruit/flour combo that a string of nuts are dipped into like a candle on a wick (found it on the street, and it's amazing), we found ourselves at church number 2. This was was much more colorful than the first, with lots of blue and red and paintings/frescos covering all the walls. But it was still very Russian Orthodox, to no one's surprise.
Our third church was a synagogue. I spotted it from church 2 (a tiny menorah stuck out above the buildings). The gates were locked, but with Kyle's broken Georgian we managed to get the guard to let us in. Timo and Kyle were fascinated by the interior. I don't know about Kyle, who's half-Jewish but raised without a religion, but I think it was Timo's first time in a synagogue. The bimah was in the center of the shul, and a small section in the back left, separated by curtains, was reserved for the women. It was the Sabbath this day but I believe we were between services at the time of our arrival -- many books had been left open on certain pages.
We ended up at church number 4 a short while later, where I was handed a candle that Kyle had bough, and told to make a wish or prayer. I did so, lighting my candle from one of the other candles and leaving it planted in the sand next to two dozen more. Hey, if I can get a non-Jew to don a yamulke, why can't I make a wish for world peace (well, I can't tell you what I really wished... it wouldn't come true then!) in a church? This church was darker and more depressing, with a large blue cross-embroidered curtain instead of a traditional Russian Orthodox walled off section.
Our fifth and final church was at the top of a nearby hill/cliff, inside the old Tbilisi fortress. It was quite a walk, but the view was pretty incredible. We scaled the fortress walls and wandered amongst the ruined portions of it. We also found a bell sitting on the wall that I was stupid enough to give a light tap... and got yelled at by the priest for doing so. Someone in Tbilisi thought it was 1:00 because of me... when it was really something like 2:30. Whoops.
We wandered along the ridge for a while, coming to a large statue of a woman with a sword. Someone told me the significance later, but I forget. I believe it has something to do with Communism.
Coming back to the hostel around 4, we were coming down from our drunk. We attempted to keep it going, but the fact that Benjy was cooking an outstanding barbeque dinner for us all with magical alcohol-absorbing properties, it was hard to do so.
At dinner I met some others whom I spent time with over the next few days. Caitlin, a Boston native (I think?), Timmy and Patrick, two Canadians. Patrick is from Quebec, teaching here, and Timmy is as well, but traveling, visiting his childhood friend Patrick. Also met Leslie, from the US on a Fulbright to teach English in Gori (Stalin's hometown), and her Austrian boyfriend Bernhard, visiting for 3 weeks.
After dinner, all the above-mentioned people traversed with Benjy a bar down the street a ways, behind the Radisson Blu hotel. It was an expat bar for non-Georgians, but a fun place nonetheless. I spent my time with Leslie and Bernhard, and some others we met there (including one very nice man from Tehran who insists I come visit him), as Benjy and the rest seemed to disappear randomly to go to a club, and were too drunk to remember to grab us on the way.
Sleep was early enough, around 2am. I had been thrown full-throttle into hostel living.
Day 3:
Caitlin, Timmy, Patrick, Kyle and I decided to attempt, sober this time, to go to a museum of Georgian art. We never made it inside. Partially because we got distracted by a doll museum, but also because the student price of 1 Lari entrance was reasonable, but to get a required guide to go through the museum would have been an outrageous 3 Lari ($2) per person in total. Unacceptable.
But the doll museum was cool, down by the Mtkvari River on N. Baratashvili Street. Also incredibly cheap for entry, we just had to check it out. And wow, was it creepy.
Dolls from all over the world, some large, some small, some funny, some frightening, surrounded us. A fat asian baby smiling creepily. An old Georgian woman with beady eyes staring you down. A marionette keeping tabs on you, strung up but menacing. I was ready to leave quite quickly.
We walked back to the hostel, stopping only to make the above-mentioned attempt at the actual art museum.
That evening, Benjy took Timmy and Patrick and I to a little underground restaurant. It was upscale, despite being inside a former cellar, and served great beer and incredible food. Peter joined us after a short time. We had for dinner some sort of eggplant dish with a spread topped with cranberries, a chicken and onion salad that was divine, a steamed mushroom/lettuce/onion combination, two types of prepared chicken with fries, a pork dish with onions, khacahpuri (of course), and beer. The total meal came out to 54.50GEL, 11GEL per person. It was that cheap.
Benjy went to meet some friend of his, but Peter, Timmy, Patrick and I went to the Georgian bathhouse.
Turkish Hammam's are more like saunas. Georgian bathhouses are sulfur baths. Apparently many Georgian men tend to go to these Banyos with prostitutes, but we just went with the four of us (maybe the full experience should be saved for the second Tbilisi visit?).
We rented a private room for 40GEL, 10 each, and Patrick and I paid an extra 20 each for the scrub-down which, like in a Turkish Hammam, is supposed to do wonders - it peels off a layer of skin and is supposed to be a great massage.
What we didn't realize was the fact that, 35 minutes into our hour-long soak, a large naked Georgian man would waltz into the room, beckon for us to lose our shorts, and thoroughly scrub down every inch of us. Every inch.
Well, it wasn't quite as bad as that makes it sound. He only walked in naked. Then he put on shorts. THEN he made Patrick, who went first, take his off and lie on the slab. The rest I chose to not watch, but when it was my turn, he had me lie prone on the slab while he scraped off my skin with a special glove. Everywhere. Then I lay supine while he repeated the process. After that, I sat up on the edge of the table, and he rested my arms across his protruding stomach and kept scrubbing away at those. After that a gigantic soapy sponge was pressed to my face and made to fall all over me. And then came the super-ultra-hot sulfur water to wash me off.
Dignity gone, I didn't bother reclothing when I jumped back into the bath. We finished up our hour, rinsed off in the provided freshwater showers (to smell a little less like eggs) and went on our merry way. Quite the experience...
Late that night, around 10pm, Patrick and I set out to go to the casino. We stopped first by the Casino Iveria Tbilisi, in the ground floor of the Radisson Blu. But they didn't have Texas Hold-em, so we left. Next we went to the Shangri La, which was quite a walk along the river by the glass pedestrian bridge, known locally as the Always bridge, since the newly constructed monstrosity holds a striking resemblance to a maxipad.
The women at the front desk, each one named Ana, insisted they had Texas Hold'em upstairs. So we registered with them, and were given ID numbers (I am 32468) and cards to go with them, so they could keep track of what we spent and lost.
They did not have Texas Hold'em. That is to say, they did, but only as a game against the dealer... so basically blackjack, but more confusing and sillier.
I took 50GEL around midnight and laid the money down at the Blackjack table. Patrick did the same, with 20GEL. I was given 30 in chips and Patrick 10. Confused, I pointed to the sign that said "Minimum Bet 10" and asked why I only got 30. It turns out we were playing in US Dollars.
Upset, but not disheartened, I took my $30 (three minimum bets) and started playing. Patrick put his first and last bet on the table too. He lost, I won. I invited him to sit with me while I played for a bit.
30 minutes later I had multiplied my buy-in by a factor of at least 7. Patrick, who speaks Russian (oh, everyone in the place was speaking Russian or Ukrainian... it seems Georgians can't afford this casino, or it caters to the mafia/oligarchy), started hearing the floor managers whisper to each other, glancing in my direction as I continuously raked in more and more chips. At one point, the manager whispered to the dealer at my table, who responded in Russian, "are you sure?" He then started giving me more scrutinizing glances as I made my betting choices.
It may sound paranoid, because I wasn't winning much in the grand scheme of things. But I had lost maybe 10 hands out of the last half hour. For whatever reason, I just wasn't losing. And every time I had a stack that matched my original buyin, I pushed that $30 off to the side, so if I lost what I let myself keep I would walk away with a profit. And I was winning very quickly. Our theory is that they thought I was counting cards. Whatever the reason, when the bouncers started standing behind me to watch me play, I thought it time to cash out, and did so with great haste. I walked away from that casino having paid for my flight to Tbilisi and all the expenses I incurred or would incur during the rest of the weekend. I also walked away with more money made in 40 minutes than most Georgians earn in a month.
Day 4:
On this day, Timo, Patrick, Timmy and another Canadian (whose name I just can't remember, so we'll call him Ian) and I went to Gori, hometown of the late Joseph Stalin.
To get there, we took the metro (which, like in most former soviet countries, is clean, in great working order, way underground to double as a bomb shelter, with trains that move quickly and arrive frequently) to Didube, where the Marshrutkas leave from. We could have gotten a cab ride there for an absurd amount of money, but as is the Marshrutka only cost 5GEL each. We left Tbilisi around 10, arriving in Gori just under an hour later.
We were dropped off just behind the Stalin Museum, which was build next to his childhood home, where he was born and lived for 4 years. His home is still there, in its original splendor (it was quite a squalid situation). His family rented one of the two rooms for themselves and their son Joseph. The neighborhood around it was demolished for the museum and park surrounding it. But it's a simple enough affair, covered by a Stalinist Gothic-style pavilion with hammer sickles and stars overhead.
The museum itself is just the story of Stalin's life, from his humble childhood to his early involvement with Lenin at the very beginning of the revolution (which never happened). We were showed pictures of Stalin carrying Lenin's coffin at his funeral (which didn't happen), and all kinds of other wonderful, completely authentic items, like a young Stalin looking like Groucho Marx. Speaking of which, the pictures they showed created a wonderful image of the evolution of Stalin's mustache!
After the museum our guide took us to his personal rail carriage. Stalin hated to fly, and he took the train everywhere. The carriage was bulletproof and reinforced, and its what he rode everywhere. I actually got to go into his cabin and sit on his personal bed! Then we were let into his house itself, instead of standing outside. Really cool.
In the landlord's room, the adjacent room to Stalin's first home, we found a bunch of letters, amongst other items, that Stalin had written to his mother. What a mamma's boy! My personal favorite, letter is as follows. Keep in mind that at the time, Stalin was the leader of the largest nation on the planet.
"Greetings mother dear!
I got your letter. It's nice that you don't forget us. It is my fault that I didn't write to you, but what to do? I was very busy and I had no time for letters.
Take care of your health. Tell me if you are in need of something. Nadya will send you your medicine.
I feel well.
Live a thousand years.
Your Soso.
22.12.1931"
Really? He thinks she would forget him? What a shame! If my child were one of the most powerful men in the world, I probably wouldn't forget the guy. Apparently the Georgians have a joke: Englishmen have a wife and a lover, and love their wife. Frenchmen have a wife and a lover, and love their lover. Italians have a wife and a lover, and love them both. Georgians have a wife and a lover, and love their mother. Stalin was a true Georgian, then.
After the museum, we said goodbye to Patrick, who had to make the 6 hour trek back to his village. The remaining four of us walked down to the river Mejuda, and followed it for a short while until we hit the Gori Fortress.
There's nothing in the fortress besides the crumbling walls, but the view is magnificent. From the fortress, we could see the whole of Gori, as well as the countryside surrounding it. Beautiful, and windy.
Our next stop was food. I have a theory, that you haven't really been to a place until you've satisfied three of the four following requirements: one thing touristy, one bathroom trip, one meal, and one night's sleep. We had accomplished the first two at the museum. The third was found on Stalin Avenue, just before the major intersection at Chavchavadze Street. A little restaurant, where we ordered khinkali, khachapuri and some new things, like barbecue chicken (with basically no barbecue). It was good, and so cheap, as usual.
Next we headed to the marshrutkas on Chavchavadze Street, just before the River Liakhvi. We got a cab for 15 Lari round trip to a place called Uplistsikhe, a cave town near Gori. It was about a 30 minute drive, and I slept the whole way. But the four of us were crowded into the cab, and it was quite cheap to make the run, especially since the driver would wait for us at the place.
Upon arrival, we asked the cab driver to wait an hour in broken Russian. He said it would cost another 5GEL. We agreed, as 20 is what we had expected to pay at the beginning. We paid 1GEL for entry each. Student prices rock.
Uplistsikhe is in one of the windiest places I've ever been. We found ourselves on multiple occasions fighting the wind to just stand. But it's a beautiful location. People have inhabited this place as far back as 1,000 BC. They used the caves as their homes. There were underground access tunnels, too, which meant they could be besieged and still have water access from the nearby river. Timo and I wandered up to the top of the settlement, which promised breathtaking views. Timmy joined us, with his Jesus-hair whipping across his face. Ian lagged behind somewhere. I'm not totally sure what held him up.
As our hour of hurricane winds-infested exploration wound to a close, we headed back. But Ian fell way behind us, and we didn't know where he was when we got back to the car park. We had to send Timmy back in to get him.
In the car park, we bumped into Leslie and Bernhard, who had returned to Gori the night before and came to Uplistsikhe on Leslie's extended lunch break from teaching.
We got back to the marshrutka parking lot in Gori much faster than our original trip, making me think that perhaps the driver had gotten lost the first time. I handed him 20GEL to pay, expecting 5GEL in change. See, we had paid him 5 upon arrival in Uplistsikhe, so we only had 15 more to pay. But he said something about waiting, and didn't want to remember the 5 we had already paid him. Frustrated, I snagged the 20GEL from his hands and scrounged 15 from the rest of us, gave him that, and we left the car with him yelling at us in the background.
We got on a Marshrutka leaving 10 minutes later, and by 5:30 had arrived in Tbilisi.
I parted ways with the guys at this point, and went to a little cafe near the Doll Museum to meet Ana, one of my brother's friends from UChicago, who lives here.
We were to meet at 6 at the cafe by the Gabriadze theater. Ana was late, stuck in traffic, but we had a few drinks and chatted for about an hour.
Around 7:30 Ana had to meet her mother, who was getting off work, for something, so we parted ways, and I walked back to the hostel.
At Why Not?, I found Timmy cooking dinner for himself. He offered me some, and I couldn't refuse. It was a conglomeration of whatever he found at the supermarket. Some chicken, smoked cheese, and all sorts of vegetables. Quite good.
Later, I went on a souvenir run with Benjy. See, alcohol in Istanbul is absurdly expensive, so I went out and bought a bottle of Georgian wine and a bottle of a Georgian liquor called ჭაჭა, or Chacha. It's foul stuff, but it's what the people drink, so I must do the same. We got the stuff from a local winery - in Georgia, that's a place where they crush grapes and bury the juices in clay pots in the ground for months on end to let them ferment - just down the street. Really cool place.
Jonas and I had to buy the Why Not? Kiev hostel a bread knife when we were there. They really needed it. And so did Tbilisi. So I got one at the supermarket while we were out. Peter was very appreciative of the purchase.
Around 1 in the morning I went out to get eggs. I made egg in a hole for those of us still awake. Peter was very upset that I hadn't told him I could make breakfast, and was just mooching off of the free breakfast each morning instead of cooking for him. I told him I'd cook all he wanted if he hired me in Kiev this summer (I'm pushing for a month of employment with him). We'll see how that works out later.
I had a 4:40 flight back to Istanbul, arriving at 6am. I didn't sleep. just before 3 I left for the airport, and worked my way to the plane. I slept on the flight, but that was it. I went straight from the airport the next morning to class. It was a miserable day of classes. But worth it. So worth it.
Part 2: Reactions
Gori is apparently the only place in Georgia that still likes Stalin somewhat. His policies affected the Georgians at large so negatively, only those in his hometown still consider him a hero of sorts... well, some of them. Apparently if you get a tour guide at the museum who likes Stalin, she'll skip the part of the tour where they show you the Soviet atrocities. Our tour guide showed it to us. It's a hit or miss liking of Stalin.
Among things I didn't know about Georgia; the 2008 South Ossetia war is still being waged. The fighting has ceased, but the Russians still occupy South Ossetia. Also, when they first invaded, they actually marched through Georgia, not just South Ossetia, as far as Gori. They turned back before going through to Tbilisi. Apparently, though I didn't know at the time, in Gori you can find marks on the walls from bullets near the museum. The only reason they didn't go through to Tbilisi is apparently that they didn't want the bad press of invading a neighboring capital city. And I heard that European presidents and prime ministers were taking turns "babysitting" Tbilisi. That is, they were taking turns spending the night in the city so that if the Russians attacked, they could call it an attack on their country, and retaliate. Essentially, had Russia invaded Tbilisi, they would immediately be the bad guys, more so than they already were by invading in the first place. Does that make sense?
Georgian food seems to be a blend of Chinese, Turkish, and Russian food. Surprise surprise. But I still find it interesting.
The buildings in Tbilisi are old and faded. The city very clearly had its heyday in the Russian Empire, and during Soviet times let themselves go a bit. They haven't yet refurbished the city on the outside, though I hear the inside of the buildings are generally renovated and modern. But from the outside looking in, even the nicer buildings are tired and worn. Oh, and there are still plenty of buildings that are legitimately crumbling or completely fallen apart, wooden and stone/brick buildings alike.
I would honestly love to go back at some point. It was a really fascinating culture. Though I should learn to read their scribbly script. It's really strange -- I think it's the first place I've ever been where literally EVERYTHING was unreadable. Even in Korea, the occasional Chinese character popped up, and in Ukraine/Belarus I could sort of read the cyrillic. But Georgian script is indecipherable.
That's all I have for now. Until the next one!
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